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My math class is the middle level for 7th grade. We work on skills that will be of great benefit to students when they take pre-algebra as 8th graders. With changes to our curriculum this year, students will not receive a textbook nor a workbook. What I will be teaching will come from various texts, so students will be given packets of units. All of the units and many of the worksheets will be accessible online, as the textbooks being used are all available online. At the beginning of the school year, students are given the information needed to access these items. In addition, I have set up accounts for each student that give him/her access to the books, online tutorials, practice quizzes, workbook pages and much more. Each student has his/her own username and password on a sheet that also gives him/her the directions to access what he/she needs online.
The websites for the textbook are: www.pearsonsuccessnet.com and www.phschool.com. To view the letter given to the students to access these online sources, just click here.
On a daily basis, class will start with minimath. Minimath will consist of computation and story problems that deal with the material we are currently working on in class, as well as review material. Minimath will be displayed, and students will have folders in my classroom for recording scores & keeping their work. When a student is absent from class, he/she will be required to print off the minimath that he/she must complete. This will also be true for any minimath that is extra credit. To access minimath, click here. Grades for minimath will be recorded in TeacherEase weekly, under the "Jumpstart" category.
A weekly assignment that we do in math is our Friday Math Problem (FMP). This is a story problem in which students will sometimes have to give a written explanation, but sometimes they will just have to show how they solved the problem. The story problem will be one in which the students will have to do more than one step in order to solve it. We will go over practice problems together in class the first week or two, so that students learn the expectations for the problems. Also, students will be given a guide to remind them what they need to include when a written explanation is required. For a copy of that guide, click here. The FMP will be in TeacherEase under the "Rich Task" category.
Approximately every other week (usually on Fridays), we will be starting class with timed tests for basic facts. Students will chart their progress according to their test scores. The highest score each quarter will be taken as a test grade. I will input a grade for these about 1/2 way through a quarter (and send you an email), but I will update it every time the student raises his/her score. First semester time tests are multiplication facts, 1-10. Second semester will be division facts, 1-10.
One aspect of math that students generally don't like is having to show their work--unfortunately for them, I require work to be shown, or student will lose points. We start out with fairly simple problems, that we maybe wouldn't need work for, but it is great practice for the harder problems we will get to. That way when students do encounter these tougher problems they are already familiar and well-practiced on the steps needed to solve the problem.